[[SS]Grifter]

Until the 360, I was always a PS gamer apart from the early days of Nintendo.

I have had 2 360's, not one of them has broke or has died on me.

I waited through the first 6 months of the 360's release to let the bugs get worked out, then I bought it. I have never had it die on me, not once. I did send it in to get a different CD player installed - like many others did - because it was so loud. It wasn't broken, it was the model of the CD player that was installed. I got it back in 7 days at no cost to me, was happy as a clam and it was a lot quieter.

I then traded the original model in for an Elite, whice I have been quite happy with. No issues, never had the RRoD, nothing. I keep mine out in the open, well ventilated and I don't screw around with it by moving it all over the place. It sits on my desk hooked up to my 27" HD PC monitor and doesn't move.

Like many others have said, hands down - Live is unrivaled. Some of the PS3 games do have their own servers that actually run the game. 2 I can think of off the top of my head are Resistance and WarHawk. I have played those on my brothers PS3 before I moved, and they were actually cool games. However, a lot of the PS3 games are direct peer-to-peer (where Xbox has you log into a Live server, then attach to a game). Sony stated as much that they didn't feel the need to create an online host system like Live, so they didn't. The peer-to-peer on the PS3, from my experience, isn't any better than the peer-to-peer on the PS2.

Is there lag online? Of course. It's an online game, there's always going to be lag to some extent regardless if you play on a PC, PS3 or 360. I have noticed it especially on the baseball games online. It's just like a half second slower, unlike how it is playing single player. But I have experienced that on both the PS2, PS3 and 360.

In the end, it's what you want out of the gaming system. My brother strictly uses his PS3 now to play WarHawk and watch Blu-Ray movies. He's since moved onto the 360 because of the stability of their online. He's quite happy. I didn't get a PS3 for several reasons. The loss of exclusive games, the uncertainty of their online and where they were taking it, I didn't need a Blu-Ray player to play games I wanted a gaming console to play games and that's what I bought, the fact that I was still needing to create a name for every game I had to play also bothered me having been spoiled by Live and the "One Name All Games" policy they have. I like that.

All I can suggest to you is to try it out. If you have a buddy that has one, go over their house tell him what you want to do and test drive the console and see how you like it.

Myself, I'm not disappointed in the system. It's updated on a continual basis and the functionality is very easy.

Good luck.